


Private Friends

by orchid314



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Desire, Developing Sherlock Holmes/John Watson, Established Sherlock Holmes/John Watson, M/M, Poetry, Watson Attempts to Write a Sonnet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-24
Updated: 2018-06-24
Packaged: 2019-05-17 07:06:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,999
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14827686
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orchid314/pseuds/orchid314
Summary: John Watson tries to make sense of words and desire. Sometimes, he finds, that’s not such a simple task.





	Private Friends

**Author's Note:**

> My wholehearted thanks to [sanguinity](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sanguinity) for her keen, funny, whip-smart read of this story and for her suggestions, both large and small, for improving it.
> 
> And my gratitude to [SC Frankles](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SCFrankles/pseuds/SCFrankles) for her wonderful Brit picking.

Ah, Sunday morning. Watson lay in his bed, nestled in the comfort of the newly laundered sheets, listening to the birdsong outside his window and the rustle of the leaves of the plane tree in the garden behind the house. The summer air entered the room, fresh and sweet. He felt an enormous contentment at being alive.

Perhaps this was due to the fact that one Mr Sherlock Holmes was not there to harry him out of his indolence. He had certainly made a valiant attempt at it. Holmes had set out early that morning (Watson did not think he had slept during the night), bustling into his room at an ungodly hour, delivering various injunctions and provisos, stating several times the name of the hotel where he was to stay in Cambridgeshire. Watson, in the haze of half-sleep, eyed Holmes's valise.

"Why are you taking your black one? You said it was a case of embezzlement, merely one step up from a bank audit, and that there was no possibility of physical harm."

"Yes, that's true. I did say that."

"But that's the bag in which you carry your disguises. Sherlock, what are you up to?"

"Here's the address of the hotel. Wire me if anything should arise. But you must ask for me under Everett E. Everson, do you hear? I'll return soon!"

Watson had given him a hard look then rolled over to face the wall, his coverlet pulled up to his chin.

Well, Holmes would survive without him. Watson was secretly glad of the respite, knowing that his friend would be gone for only a day, two at most. And Holmes had assured him he would send word of any unforeseen developments. 

How very quiet it was, though. The silence positively reverberated through the house. Holmes did leave a gaping space behind him. Far below, he could hear Mrs Hudson's and Lucy's voices in conversation.

What if? With such an expanse of time before him and the world in fine feather, what if he were to try to write the poem he had been turning over in his mind for some time now? One that would memorialise Holmes's gifts in a way that did full justice to them. The stories–he liked the stories well enough, and they had brought Holmes a not inconsiderable amount of business. But a poem that captured the essence of the man? That would be something worth striving for.

The only problem with such a lofty ambition was the instrument to hand. Watson knew he was a poet manqué and had accepted the fact years ago. He would never possess that quality that the true poet was endowed with, the ability to weave everyday words like sun or bird or plane tree into something that pierced the heart. But the urge to compose a poem would come upon him occasionally and he would honour it, ever hopeful that this time the Muse would bless him with her inspiration. 

He realised that he had not felt the desire to write a poem since before Mary's passing. Before Holmes went away. Perhaps this newly-returned impulse had something to do with how happy he was these days. It was palpable, like a pulse, a beat within his veins, a surging feeling that might be tenderness or gratitude.

Keats was supposed to have always bathed and dressed in his best clothes before sitting down to write a poem, and Watson made it a practice of his own when writing a first draft. It gave him courage for the endeavour and set all to rights. 

After finishing with the morning's toilet, freshly shaven and in his navy suit, Watson paused before the small bookshelf he kept in his room, the one reserved for the volumes of poetry to which he turned most often. He thumbed through their well-worn pages with an eye to what he would take with him to the sitting room: Palgrave's, of course. The Hood rhyming dictionary. The Trench anthology, not as good as Palgrave's, but still a substantial volume. The Brewer book on writing poetry. Shakespeare, certainly. 

Holmes read poetry himself. Sometimes. He admired the ancients, but had a very eclectic knowledge of them, having been tutored at home, Watson later discovered, rather than sent away to school. And he tolerated the Elizabethans and Pope, but had no patience at all for the heartfelt yearnings of the Romantic poets. Shelley had been the recipient of Holmes's special scorn.

\--

"Listen to this, Watson! 'Till joy denies itself again, And, too intense, is turn'd to pain.' What is that supposed to mean? Or this: 'When you die, the silent Moon, In her interlunar swoon, Is not sadder in her cell, Than deserted Ariel.' Pah." And he tossed the volume into the corner behind his chair.

"How can you mock it so? It's a poem about the power of music, of devotion to music. Do you not revere your violin, and does it not render up its charms to you, whenever you have felt the music move within you? I know it to be the case, for I have witnessed it."

Restless, Holmes picked up one of Watson's rhyming dictionaries that lay nearby and glanced through it, his attention suddenly diverted. He rattled off one of the first entries as if it were a patter song.

"'Bray, clay, day, dray, tray, flay, fray, gay, hay, jay, lay, may, nay, pay.' What you're always asking our clients to do. 'Play, ray, say, way, pray, spray, slay, stay, stray, sway, tway. Fay, affray.' We've been in one or two of those, haven't we, Watson? 'Allay, array, astray, away, belay, bewray.' Bewray?"

"A variant of betray. Weren't you working on rearranging your 'M' files?"

"'Betray, decay, defray, delay, disarray.' The continual state of Lestrade and his men. 'Display, dismay, essay, forelay, gainsay, inlay, relay, repay, roundelay, virelay.' Do you know that last?"

"What last?"

"Virelay."

"Hmm. It's a kind of poem, I believe."

"Well, of course. 'Neigh, weigh, inveigh, shay, prey, they, convey, yea, obey, purvey, survey, disobey, gray, aye' and–'denay,'" he had finished with a flourish.

Watson had shaken his head, but he hadn't been entirely capable of stifling a laugh.

\--

Downstairs Watson took his writing box from its place next to the settee and sat down with it at Holmes's desk. He opened the box and folded down the writing panel, arranging his cigarette case and matches at his upper right. He had bought the desk with the proceeds from the first story he had sold to the _Strand_ and in the thirteen years since, it had acquired a smooth patina, the oils from his hand having darkened the woodgrain around the clasp.

He drew a fresh sheet of paper and chose his oldest pen. A sonnet then. He had heard it likened to a little box, the sonnet. With its strict form that the poet sought to transcend. It suited Holmes, he thought. It's what he did, after all, in solving his cases–worked within the rigid structure of the facts to arrive at the truth that surpassed them. 

He put pen to paper, gently. Here was the moment that always confounded him.

 _If, in the future mists of_ (something, something) _time,_

Hmm. For now, he would move ahead so as not to lose the tricky mood of the thing.

No, but if he didn't settle the two words now, he might throw the whole poem off and end up with a paltry facsimile of what he meant to communicate. Watson, keep going. If you're so caught up on the very first line, however are you going to make your way through all fourteen?

_If, in the future mists of coldest time,  
Men ~~should~~ ask what rose above the tenor of ~~the age~~_

Dammit, he had forgot during the past four years what an infernal thing it was to write poems. Why in Heaven's name did anyone bother with them in the first place?

_Men glance at the achievements of our age,  
They cannot fail to note one man's_

Now he had only two syllables left to describe Holmes's gift and the second had to rhyme with _time_ and he had _men_ and _man's_ in consecutive lines. He shook his head and rang the bell to request of Mrs Hudson a pot of coffee. He took up the Palgrave's and began to leaf through it to find inspiration in his old favourites, the ones his mother used to read him. He saw her fair hair bent over the pages and his heart twisted fondly at the memory. There were all the Burns poems, but especially _Ye banks and braes o' bonnie Doon_ , which his mother had made come alive so tenderly in the softer vowels of her forebears from the Western Isles.

Watson's eye caught at _A Ditty_. Hmm. By Sir Philip Sidney: "My true-love hath my heart, and I have his, By just exchange one to the other given, I hold his dear and mine he cannot miss, There never was a better bargain driven." Well. He'd got the better bargain by far: he had offered up a beaten frame and a worn-out mind and in exchange had received an entire world alive and bubbling with humanity (for better and worse), with Holmes standing at its centre. 

Now fortified with the pot of coffee that Mrs Hudson had brought him, Watson returned to his labours. His thoughts slipped into the rhythm of the clock pendulum that ticked back and forth in the arc of the late-morning sun.

_~~They cannot fail to note one man's~~ _  
_They'll note one spirit rose above the grime_  
_...With a heart-whole ecstasy that withers, and scorches, and burns, and stings!_

How had that last line found its way in there? Holmes was right that the mind's brain-attic was filled with all kinds of articles jostling next to one another for space, including stray lines of Gilbert and Sullivan. 

"That withers, and scorches, and burns, and stings." His heart had leapt and staggered and tumbled through the last six months and he was still giddy with the experience of it. 

\--

The sun of early June filled the clearing. There was pollen on Watson's shirtsleeve and damp grass beneath him. Holmes had flung his arm across Watson's middle and left it there, never thinking to move his hand, chatting on about the supreme stupidity of the Smith family members and how easily they had let themselves be deceived by Cyrus Mortimer. Watson kept glancing over at him, wondering at his openness. Had he ever seen Holmes so unguarded before?

The afternoon had turned lazy at some point, and they had indulged in kisses that became increasingly languorous. Holmes had initiated them and Watson tried to make sense of this change. Holmes had been a willing enough participant in their new arrangement, which had begun during last November's abbreviated days and lengthening nights. But until now, he had deferred to Watson in all things amatory. What was he witnessing here?

"What's come over you? Summer got into your blood?" he asked Holmes, who leaned over him, propped on his elbow. Stems of grass tickled the nape of Watson's neck.

"I believe a case of Dr John Watson has come over me, now that I think of it. Is it treatable, do you happen to know, or shall I perish from its symptoms?"

Watson laughed at this. "Is that how you speak to all your doctors?"

Holmes considered. "No. Only to the ones who provide me with regular physical aid." He patted the ground between where their bodies lay stretched. "No, but come, John. It's time to go or we shall never catch our train back to town."

But his words must have been half-hearted, for he leaned down to catch Watson's lips in another kiss. Shivers bloomed in the cavity of Watson's chest as he looked up at him. Holmes seemed in no hurry and the embrace deepened as he bore down upon him, insistent. 

"Yes," Watson said, his breath laboured. "I see you're in quite a hurry to be gone."

Holmes laughed to himself and rolled on to his back at Watson's side, his eyes closed, seeming to absorb the last of the delightful sensations that had passed between them.

"Yes...yes." Holmes's voice was filled with a golden dazedness. 

Suddenly he sprang up. "No, but really, John. We must be getting a move on. Come on, I'll help you gather your things." 

They had flung aside their coats and collars and other articles of clothing directly they had arrived at the pond earlier that afternoon. Holmes hopped around, snatching up the items, each time with increasingly exaggerated gestures as he saw the appreciative audience he had in Watson. He came to a stop before him. 

"Look at you, in your state of abandon. Do I need to make you presentable for polite society?" he said, throwing the clothing in a pile on the ground next to them and carelessly beginning to put himself to rights. He sat down on his heels before Watson. "Hmm," he clucked. "This shirt is all askew. We shall have to remedy that."

Watson marvelled at his jaunty tone.

"And are you the man to do that?"

"Yes, of course I am...Let's see. Hand me your collar and where is the pin?" Watson dared not stir, feeling the brush of the back of Holmes's fingers against his neck as they performed their duties. 

"Mary used to do this for me."

"Did she?" Holmes asked quietly. "The cuffs." He held out his hand and Watson supplied them, together with the cufflinks. Holmes became engrossed in his task, giving it his utmost concentration. His dark hair was shot through with a few strands of grey, Watson noticed. 

"Your necktie," Holmes pronounced and he glanced up at Watson as he pulled the tie through the channel of his collar. Watson cleared his throat, but did not remove his gaze from his friend's face. 

"Your necktie," Holmes repeated.

"Yes."

"You'll let me know if I've pulled it too tight."

"Of course."

A frolicking breeze moved over them.

"You'll let me know if it's not to your liking."

"Certainly."

"You'll let me know what it is you need." The afternoon came to a standstill. 

"Because." He examined the tie as he looped it through its knot. "I do have an obligation to you. It shouldn't." He pulled the knot firm. "Always be you. Who leads in these things. I want to learn to do what pleases you most." Then he fanned out the knot, admiring his handiwork.

Watson could think of no reply.

Another breeze drifted over them, ruffling Watson's moustache. Holmes playfully tried to tamp it down with the flat of his hand, but it defied his efforts. 

Then he leapt up, offering his hand. He gave a shy smile, and Watson wondered if he could be any more besotted than he already was.

"After all, isn't that what a man does when he is in love?" 

Before Watson knew what he was about, Holmes was making his way down the lane towards the village. He stood dumbfounded. Then Holmes tossed Watson's hat high into the air and Watson scrambled after him to catch it before it fell in the dust.

Why hadn't he seen this coming? But Holmes always was one to reveal the most important clues as if they were so much diversion. 

\--

Watson drank from his cup, grimacing at the coffee gone cold. Back to work.

_If, in the future mists of coldest time,_  
_Men glance at the achievements of our age,_  
_They'll note one spirit rose above the grime,_  
_And with fine reason as his tool and gauge,_

He set down his pen and lit a cigarette, musing. Another memory intruded.

\--

Holmes rested his head on Watson's torso. He was never preoccupied with the messiness afterwards. Watson could only manage to run his hand, barely, over Holmes's shoulder, taking a few mild stabs at it. More and more since Holmes's declaration in the clearing that June afternoon, touch had taken the place of words between them. 

They lay in silence for a good while. 

"I'll fetch some water and a cloth to clean you," Holmes said.

"No, come here," and Watson hauled him up beside him. They were close now and more than a little odorous, breathing into each other, Watson grazing Holmes with his moustache, trying to make him look up so that he could catch what was in his eyes. They murmured to one another, barely making sense, exchanging half-formed sounds of comfort. 

Watson asked Holmes if he should like him to reciprocate, but Holmes shook his head. Instead he lowered himself again, resting his head on Watson's torso and nudging into his hand so that his hair might be stroked. Watson began to caress his scalp. From this angle Holmes was all bones, curled there, his eyes heavy-lidded.

The price one paid for experiencing desire was to have uncertainties–small contorted beasts that delighted in inflicting their pangs of doubt–crowd into one's heart. Rather like Pandora's box, but in reverse, Watson thought. Why, my friend, why did you leave and never let me know you were alive?

Holmes mumbled something, but Watson could not be sure what it was. "What was that you said?" Never mind, Holmes was drifting at this point, so Watson tugged at the blanket that was bunched at his feet and arranged it around Holmes's shoulders as best he could, that his friend should not feel the damp that had crept into the room.

\--

_If, in the future mists of coldest time,_  
_Men glance at the achievements of our age,_  
_They'll note one spirit rose above the grime,_  
_And with fine reason as his tool and gauge,_

_They'll see how this man...this man..._

Concentration had almost deserted him now. The words on the paper seemed far below him, cuneiform scratches of black on white, their meaning fading.

\--

The last, or most, of autumn had fallen away and the trees stood in their stark outlines, the rain coating the trunks and branches black.

"Well, the coalman finally made his delivery. Mrs Hudson's giving him a great talking-to downstairs! It should begin to warm up soon, but in the meantime I'd throw another blanket round your shoulders, if I were you." 

Holmes looked at him with an air of surprise. It was clear that his thoughts had been far away, pulled out by one of those strong tides that took hold of his mind.

"Not a night to be out in at all, and bless those souls who are," Watson said and threw more coal on the fire that he had laid a short while since.

"Hmm."

Watson settled into his chair and wrapped himself in one of the shawls that Mrs Hudson had been kind enough to bring up for them. He let his eyes close while his friend paced back and forth. Although he no longer maintained a practice, he still had a few patients who refused to admit the fact and begged that he might attend on them. It was difficult to refuse Mrs Liddell, whose mother was ailing, and besides, they lived such a very short distance away, and he had ended up spending the entire afternoon in the humble house off the Paddington Street Gardens.

The lamp on Holmes's desk sputtered out with a hiss, and Watson did not rise to relight it, content to let the flames of the fire, now grown strong, illuminate the room on their own.

Holmes sat himself down in his chair, laying his violin across his lap with one hand and tucking a clutch of strings beside him in the crevice formed by the cushion. He began to remove the old strings from the instrument, tossing them into the darkness, and took up one of the new strings, threading it along its path towards the neck of the violin. 

"However can you see well enough to run the string where it needs to go?"

"I can do it by touch. Have done for years. Haven't you noticed?" 

The rain pattered harder against the windows, and the flames of the hearth spit and flared. Watson watched, drawn as if by an invisible filament of his own, to where Holmes tied the first violin string and turned the peg to tighten it. 

He proceeded to thread the second string–the E string, was it?–and again Watson saw how he drew it along the body of the violin until he arrived at the second peg, winding the string and pulling it tighter with each turn. Holmes pulling his hair by the roots, turning it tight with his fist, the flesh of lips grazing against each other, hips dragging, seeking purchase. He gave a little shake to dispel the betraying image, alarmed, and looked to Holmes. Had he seen anything? But he only continued to apply the strings, head bowed, engrossed in his task.

Watson cast his eyes over the bookshelves, then to the desk and the far window beyond it, but Holmes's work drew him back. Again the strings were threaded, again the pegs were turned and tightened, again the images of hair and lips and legs came over him.

"Shall I play for you now?" 

"Oh. Yes. Yes, thank you."

Holmes rose to his feet, turning this way and that as he played snatches and passages of works he had performed before, but he did not appear to be immediately pleased with the sound the violin produced. He waited a bit, then played the instrument again, and did this several times more until he was satisfied that the tone held true.

He smiled at Watson. No, there was no archness there. He hadn't guessed. "I'll play one of your favourites. The Gypsy Airs."

Ah, the Gypsy Airs. Sarasate on a cold autumn's night, the rain blowing outside, inside a warm fire. He leaned deeper into his chair and waited for the familiar strains to begin. Holmes hadn't performed this piece since Watson had returned to Baker Street.

Holmes played and, as he progressed through the tender notes, he became rapt in a column of his own making, the world shut out so easily, as always. Watson could feast his gaze in safety now, and he followed his friend with single-minded attention, boldly assessing those hands, the dexterous fingers. The man's face above all, Watson thought. So beautiful, those shadows beneath his eyes. There was no one who wanted to press his lips to them like he did and to feel their dark coolness.

His blood burned for this man. God forgive him, he wanted to seduce him. But not because his blood burned. Because of the sweetness in the notes, the sweetness within Sherlock. He felt the jolt of saying that name to himself. How many people in this world had ever called him by that name alone? He wanted that privilege. He suddenly wanted it more than anything.

Holmes finished at the end of the Lento section, as Watson liked, and the spell of it hung in the air.

"Were you thinking of your Spanish damsel whom you always used to dream about?" 

"What's that?" 

"The one with the dark hair and beautiful eyes." Watson stared at him. "The young lady you used to think about during the long marches in Afghanistan." 

"Oh! No."

"Mrs Watson, then?" Holmes whispered.

"No. No, not about her." 

Watson smiled with an effort. He did not see how he could bear this situation for much longer. But he must do it, because it was clear that Holmes–. Sherlock–. Sherlock Holmes–. Was not prepared–. Did not–. Was not, nor ever would be, inclined to meet him where he longed to go. He chastised himself most bitterly for his self-deception. He had let himself believe that Holmes's time away would have wrought a change in his heart. Not as much as it had altered Watson, because, well–. But a little.

Better to content himself with an unanswered desire than risk a friendship so hard-won, even if that desire sent fevers through him far into the rain-soaked night. 

\--

There had been one time, though. Before the fateful encounter in Switzerland. When Watson thought he had glimpsed something of his friend behind the facade.

They were walking up Great Portland Street, the evening setting in. The sky had begun to clear after several days of rain, leaving puddles filled with the pink light of early spring. It was the hour when shops were beginning to close and passers-by were making their way home.

A cab splashed past them. Watson, who was closer to the kerb, jumped out of the way, but his overcoat was already covered with stains of tobacco-coloured water.

"The devil–! I just had this cleaned and at no small expense, either. Cab drivers–the most oblivious race in all the British Isles!"

He and Holmes had taken refuge against a nearby shop-front. The shop's window contained various wigs, hats, an assortment of swords and daggers, a plum-coloured doublet that had seen better days, and what appeared to be a bandolier draped over an American-style saddle, all artfully arranged.

"That's all right, stop if you like. There's no need to forgo looking on my account."

Watson felt rather self-conscious but he acquiesced, examining the interior of the costumer's beyond the gold lettering on the window that proclaimed the proprietor's name. He could see tall shelves that mounted up one side, while on the other the proprietor himself was waiting on a young man and woman.

"I supposed it's no use asking if you plan to attend Sir Henry's fancy dress ball, Holmes? From his letter, he seems to be fully restored from the events of last year and eager to show his friends all the improvements he's made to Baskerville Hall. I confess I do wish to see the results of his reforms.

"Of course, it would be an extravagance. But a real treat for Mary. She wants me to go as D'Artagnan and she'll be my faithful Constance. She said that I'd better get on with the preparations if we really mean to make the trip, as I'll need to grow my moustache to twice its current size. How long should that take, Holmes, do you think?" 

Watson peered again into the shop. The evening had descended several registers towards dusk, and the inside glowed warm and inviting. There were hardly any people on the street now, and the evening grew close around him and Holmes, who stood at his side, fidgeting with his gloves.

The man and woman were obviously teasing each other. He could hear their laughter rise as they tried on hats adorned with extravagant plumes and buckles, each more outlandish than the other. The shop owner handed the man a cape lined with pink satin and he twirled it around himself, playing the villain, as he pretended to bear down on the wide-eyed lady in distress. Watson thought that the two must be a couple in love, there flowed such an easy affection between them. A faint smile formed on his lips.

By some shift of the light, he saw Holmes's profile reflected in the window, almost superimposed on the merry scene within. He was staring at Watson with an expression of regret, mixed with something Watson had never seen in his face before. In anyone else he would have called it yearning, but this was Sherlock Holmes. He had the impression that Holmes had stolen the moment while Watson's attention was fixed within to observe him closely. Of course the dusk was probably playing tricks on his eyes. But an unexpected sadness welled up within him.

He did not think Holmes had caught him looking. To mask his discomfort, Watson turned to him. "I should probably just borrow something of yours, shouldn't I? That is, if you'll let me dig around in that great old chest of yours. Are you sure you don't want to come? I thought it might appeal to you because of how much you like to put on disguises. There's no one quite like you for it."

There was no reply and Watson thought that perhaps Holmes had not been paying attention, so he dropped the subject.

"I don't like to put on disguises," Holmes said, as if someone who was arguing a point. "I need to do it. There's a difference."

Watson waited, but nothing more was forthcoming. "Ah. I see. Of course. Well, let's head back to Baker Street. I want to get this coat off before it begins to stink any more of the gutter."

The last of the pink sky had vanished. Holmes's remark stayed with him for longer than he had anticipated. But, although he considered it from several angles, he was unable finally to make out its meaning. 

\--

Perhaps as a last resort, Watson took up his volume of Shakespeare's sonnets. He cast his eyes desultorily over the pages of the introduction. A commentator of the period had remarked: "so the sweete wittie soule of Ovid lives in mellifluous and honey-tongued Shakespeare, witnes his _Venus and Adonis_ , his _Lucrece_ , his sugred Sonnets among his private friends, &c." 

Watson paused. Private friends.

\--

"Tsk, tsk. It's much too late an hour to be dashing about. Neither of you is as young as you used to be. 

"Here you are, Mr Holmes, your milk as you like it. Dr Watson?" Mrs Hudson handed him his cup of tea. "Where were you this time? I know how you run around, through those awful docks and dark streets and it's a wonder you've never taken a bad beating, if I may say so." They were far past the point at which Mrs Hudson restrained her opinions before the two men when clients were not present.

Watson puffed on a cigar. "No need to worry, Mrs Hudson, I assure you," he offered, since Holmes sat in a brown study. "We spent most of the evening filing the necessary papers at Scotland Yard. Although: How did you know that we were at the docks?"

"She co-opted my Irregulars for information long ago, didn't you know that, Watson?" Holmes interposed.

"Well, yes, that's true," Mrs Hudson replied. "Who else is supposed to look after you and keep up with your whereabouts? You without kith or kin. Except for the elder Mr Holmes." But Holmes had gone back to his thoughts. Watson could tell that he was retracing their steps, assessing what they could have done differently to prevent the murder of the poor chandler's girl.

"He never was able to take care of himself properly, was he? When you lived here before, he came to depend on you such a great deal. Even though he never did like to show it. Imagine those two months, then, Dr Watson," she rattled on, "while you were deciding if you would return to Baker Street. They were an agony for him. I've never seen him so full of nerves. He thought you would say no to the idea."

Watson blushed for Holmes, who pretended not to have heard Mrs Hudson's comments. 

"Well," Watson offered with a gallant air. "I am slow at going about things, and a great creature of habit. I'm not as quick as you and our friend here are at coming to decisions. Keeping up with the both of you is a life's work in itself."

"Ah, how lovely, Dr Watson! Ever the gentleman, you are. Now, if you won't be needing anything else, I'll be retiring for the evening. Mr Holmes, I'll just ask Lucy to attend to the fire in your chamber. A terrible chill has set in, hasn't it? Dr Watson, will you be wanting one as well? A fire, I mean. No? Well, then I'll leave you here to your tea. You'll have to raid the larder yourselves if you should want anything else. Don't leave it in complete disarray!" And with that their landlady departed down the stairs. 

A distinct reserve settled on the room, broken only by the crackling of the fire. Watson thought on Mrs Hudson's words. It was the first time since Holmes's visit to his Kensington surgery that day last April that he had had any glimpse into his sentiments. They had seemed to arrive at some kind of an accord that day, but Holmes had never alluded to it again nor given any other sign of his thoughts at having Watson back in his old home.

"You've been avoiding eye contact with me over the past month," Holmes pronounced out of nowhere. "As at this very minute. Why is that? Shall I deduce it for you? Yes, I think I see it now. There's something that you're afraid you'll reveal if you engage in conversation with me, isn't there? Something you've been thinking about for rather a great while. Am I not right?"

What was this about? They had been merely sitting here having a bit of tea. 

"I'm not sure to what you're referring, old man."

Holmes pressed on. "Aren't you? Dancing about, hovering, afraid to come near me. It makes me positively jumpy. I can't even think with you around now!"

Watson could feel his blood rise. Holmes went on the attack whenever an especially sensitive vein of feeling had been exposed, he knew. Well, he wasn't going to take it tonight. He was drained by the evening's events and had no reserves of patience left.

"You keep me in the dark about quite a lot of things and I've learnt to accept it. Do I have to share with you every thought that passes through my own mind? And, besides. I don't think I've changed my behaviour in any particularly noticeable way."

"Oh, Watson," Holmes laughed with a derisive tone.

"Well, it hasn't to do with me."

"You're implying that it's something to do with me, then?" 

"I'm not implying anything at all. I'm stating that you're attempting to change the subject in an altogether obvious way."

"Attempting to change the subject?" Holmes asked, incredulous. "From what, pray?"

"Well, if you must know: From what Mrs Hudson said earlier!" 

Somehow they had ventured into territory Watson had never thought they would enter. Holmes radiated dissatisfaction.

"I shall have to speak with Lestrade about Hopkins' methods tonight. Very shabby of him to not allow the other men–" Suddenly he veered, "She's right, you know." Holmes studies the nails of his hands with acute concentration. "It was difficult. More than difficult–" he conceded. "That time, waiting. Not knowing what your response would be–."

Watson was unsure how to respond. To his astonishment, Holmes continued.

"I'd always been able to discard people when the convenient time came. Or send them packing. Or bar them from entering into my affairs in the first place. Before you came along. And you can't know the number of times that I've struggled with whether to take the morphia since you came back to Baker Street. I simply haven't learned again how to live with you so close by since I've returned to London. There's been the danger that you might decide you'd had enough of this quaint lark, after your years of living a more conventional life."

Holmes was seeking his way through his thoughts.

"And you never saw through me, that was the curious thing. Not before and not now. I admit that I am rather good with disguises, but you are more perceptive than you suppose. I knew that one day the jig would be up."

"What did you think I would find?"

"A collection of tics and tricks? Of cleverly elaborated prestidigitations? You surely must have tired of those long ago. I blow hot and cold, you know. When I'm pinned down is when I most want to be away. I take more than I give. And I can't promise that I'll change any of these things. Really, Watson, who wants to bother themselves with such an inconvenient sort of person?" 

Watson did not reply at first. 

"Well? Have I made myself clear enough?"

"I do."

"You do what?"

"I want to bother. Holmes, listen to me," Watson looked straight at him, a bulldog hunch to his shoulders. Even when Holmes inclined his head away, Watson kept on looking, so that Holmes would eventually be compelled to face him. 

"Holmes. Listen to me. What did you think I was in this for? The fun of the deductions? The demand for the stories? You know I write them up because–well, they bring in a steady supply of clients for you and the world needs to know about your work and I rather enjoy the scribbling thing. But what you are–? Who you are–? I would burn every one of the tales, every last page of my notes, to ashes if I could make you see that the man behind them is so much more than any of that.

"You're right! I do notice a thing or two, and I've learned to do so from the very best. Good God, man, I've observed you more closely than ever you did a trail of clues! I know who you really are."

It seemed as if Holmes could hardly bear to remain in his chair, as if he were shrinking from being exposed while humiliated by a need to be seen. He made to serve himself some more tea, rattling the cups and other things in the process. 

"The honey," was all Watson could think to remark. "You've spilled some. On your hand."

Several drops of honey had fallen and merged on Holmes's hand. They glistened there in the firelight, rounded and inviolate. Watson could fix his eyes on nothing else. With the slowest of movements, gently, perched on the edge of the armchair, he leaned over, a little off balance, and took Holmes's hand in his own. He felt its calluses in his grasp. He lowered his head, clumsy but intent, his whole frame now trembling, and brought his mouth to the drops, sucking them where they sat on the mound between Holmes's thumb and forefinger. Watson tasted the summer and the bees in the drops, and the muscle underneath. 

Holmes held utterly still. His hand was extended like a cardinal's accepting his vassalage. Moving as if in a dream, Watson unfastened the cuff of Holmes's shirt, tossing it aside, then drove the purple dressing gown and shirt sleeves upwards. He sighed at the pale expanse of forearm before him, the blue veins tangled there, the untouched flesh. Then he saw the bruise-coloured landscape lying further above. 

Holmes tried to pull back his arm. 

"Let me. Please," Watson whispered, his voice roughened. "Please."

He travelled with steady kisses up the skin. A sharp male flavour waited in the crook of the elbow, hiding among the scars. He spent his time there, sucking, inhaling the darkness, as if extracting a venom. The heavy folds of the gown spilled around the crown of his head.

Holmes's breath came faster now. Watson had never heard it so uncontrolled.

\--

Watson threw down his pen, his face warm at the memory and at what had followed. He leant back in the chair, grinning. Then he cast his eye over the dutiful, leaden lines before him. How could words capture the smallest part of what he felt for Holmes and the ways in which he had changed as a man because of him?

But even if he could make the words do his bidding and express all that lay in his heart, would he want to? Were there some things too private to be recorded, even in the most veiled terms? He didn't think this was an evasion because of the particular nature of their relationship or because Holmes might mock his efforts. No, perhaps some experiences were too fugitive to pin down into such confining things as sentences and paragraphs. The scenes he had recalled this afternoon, as the day drifted into evening, would certainly never be committed to paper. Only he and Holmes would know of them. There was more than a little satisfaction in the idea.

Watson rose from the chair, grasping the sheet of paper with its failed sonnet, and took it to the hearth. There he lit it and threw it in the grate, watching as it curled and twisted, the black words consumed in the orange flame. He stood for some minutes, his hands in his trouser pockets, his mind floating, alighting on no one thing. He made a rueful face, thinking on the result of his latest essay at things poetical.

A bang, a crash. Long strides up the stairs.

"Halloo there! Anybody at home? Watson? Mrs Hudson?" Holmes bounded into the sitting room. 

"John!" he cried, stopping as he took in Watson at the mantel, the ghost scent of smoke from the charred paper in the air. "You've been writing poetry, I see." He glanced at the fresh ashes in the hearth, and made a nod to himself as if to store these data away for future study. 

"You're home early."

"Am I interrupting you? You'll never guess what happened. Well, you see, the bank agent had a dog, who, most unfortunately for its owner, led us to an old painting buried beneath the bank of a nearby marsh, and rolled up inside this canvas–Do you have a moment? I'll just get rid of these things and be right back. When you've done with your work, come sit at the foot of my chair and I'll tell you all."

Baker Street settled a little more snugly on its foundations with Holmes there. The long summer evening cast its light across Holmes's face and he broke into his most comfortable smile. Then he turned, shrugging off his coat as he headed for his room, and the suspended instant vanished, like words into fire and air.

**Author's Note:**

> The rhymes that Sherlock Holmes reads are from a popular [rhyming dictionary](https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.48114) of the period, _The Rules of Rhyme: A Guide to English Versification_ by Tom Hood.
> 
> Holmes plays for John Watson from Pablo de Sarasate's Zigeunerweisen in C Minor (Gypsy Airs), performed here in a [beautifully tender rendition](https://youtu.be/B7DBr4dgjFQ) by Ruggiero Ricci.


End file.
